Artist Research: Kimsooja: A Needle Woman
Posted: March 20, 2014 Filed under: Contextualisation, Field | Tags: a needle woman, alone in the city, Art, art student research, artist, artist influence, Contextualisation, hidden loneliness of city life, kim sooja, kimsooja, loneliness in the city, overlooked, people just passing you by, single figure, surrounded by others but alone, unnoticed, Video, video art, youtube Leave a commentThe artist Kimsooja was brought to my attention by one of my tutors. In particular, it was suggested that I looked at “A needle woman”, a video installation of the artist standing in the middle of busy streets in different parts of the world as people pass her by and walk in the direction of the camera. She is a feminist artist and is approaching women’s labour of sewing within this work but I believe it definitely applies to the concept of my city project even if being alone or singled out amongst others in the city was not the artists original intention.
This work made me think about the hidden loneliness of city life and the notion of being surrounded by others in the city but alone. She is standing in the middle of many people, but no one is interacting with her, she is being overlooked and people are just passing her by. She is an insignificant figure to them and at the same time all the people around her may as well not be there at all. The feeling of loneliness if highly evident in this work and I believe her video showing herself surrounded by others who are not interacting with her or even acknowledging her existence is not dissimilar to my project imagery of a coloured figure surrounded by white silhouettes.
This piece is highly inspirational and influential to my work, it confirms to me that you can be surrounded by others in the city but at the same time singled out and alone. It sort of highlights the ideas I have been working with and in supporting them adds to my works success.
Large Painting – Reflecting and Bringing Together my Findings so Far
Posted: March 12, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: Acrylic Paint, alone amongst others, alone in the city, Art, art degree, Art Piece, Art Student, artist, charcoal, consolidating, dry brushing, gouache, hidden loneliness of the city, Ink, loneliness, Mixed media, painting, palette knife, reflecting, sepia, sepia tones, underpainting, urban loneliness Leave a commentI am very pleased with the body of work that I have been producing relating to the City. I feel like I have an interesting concept, exploring the Hidden Loneliness of the City and have experimented with this idea in depth. However, I felt like I needed to consolidate my findings and portray what I have learnt and think is working so far. I decided to make a piece reflecting on these findings.
In this piece, I have incorporated a variety of different medias including paint, ink, charcoal and gouache. I have portrayed the sepia tone influence that I have been working with inspired by an artist I came across in Berlin and user Shoe 18 on the deviantart forum. I started off with a dark brown ground here, influenced by my experimentation after undertaking the grounds workshop, I also painted an underpainting using a palette knife and worked on top of this employing Dry Brushing techniques that I learnt from attending the paint workshop sessions with James Green. I have worked with the concept of all of the people around you being insignificant and portrayed that they are just bodies and may as well just be white silhouettes because I believe it is particularly successful and left one person in colour to show they are lonely and singled out among all the others that they do not interact with.
I wanted to formulate a piece that includes all the experimentation and things that I have learnt that I believe have been positive and successful within this project. I believe this is an accurate reflection of this and a successful piece of work in itself. Now that I have consolidated and reflected, I feel that I can move on in my project with confidence and continue my experimentation.
After my tutorial on Monday, I realised that I haven’t experimented with monochrome because I was so inspired by the influences of the artists I mentioned, but this is what I will be working with next, I believe that the loneliness may be heightened by an empty monochrome background and the colours of the one person will appear more vibrant and therefore the person will stand out more. This seems like it will progress my work further and add to the portrayal of the Hidden Loneliness of Cities.
Hidden Loneliness in Cities – Colour Exploration – Artists That Have Explored Urban Loneliness Through Brighter Colours
Posted: March 9, 2014 Filed under: Contextualisation, Field | Tags: alone in the city, alone in the city art, Art, Art Student, artist influence, artistic inspiration, Artists, bright colours, casoni ibolya, colour, colour exploration, Contextualisation, existing artists, feeling lonely, field, Fine Art, Leonid Afremov, loneliness in the city, miki de goodeboom, urban loneliness, vibrant colour Leave a commentAfter producing quite a successful and substantial body of work focusing on the use of monochrome colouring and sepia tones, I have decided to investigate whether these colours are affecting the loneliness of my work. After producing my green shaped underpainting, I started thinking about the fact that the figures didn’t appear to look as lonely as in my darker works and so I would like to clarify this by briefly investigating and producing some brighter works and analysing their success in showing the hidden loneliness of city life.
To start, I thought it would be beneficial to investigate whether existing artists have attempted to show loneliness in cities through bright colours. I have come across a few, but I do not feel that the figures within them feel as lonely, because darker colours create a negative atmosphere and bright colours a positive one, so the figure seems to look like they are just happily walking through a colourful city even though they are alone, rather than feeling down and depressed by the fact that they are.
Leonid Afremov – “Alone in the City”
I am really drawn to the technique adopted by Leonid Afremov, however, in terms of portraying loneliness, I just feel that the figure looks as if they are walking back from somewhere by themselves. In my work, I am investigating portraying loneliness in the city where there is others around you. It is horrible to think that there are so many people but you interact with no one which heightens how lonely you feel in my opinion. This is a beautiful painting but I am not sure it portrays the same message as my work or is successful in showing loneliness in the city, partly because of the bright more positive colours and partly because there are no other people for the figure to feel lonely around or feel like they don’t exist to.
Miki De Goodeboom – “Lonely in the Big City”
I think the abstract nature of Miki De Goodeboom’s piece is highly successful, even though there is no city like imagery behind the figure, because of the square and geometric shapes our brain seems to associate them with one. Here, I do feel that the figure looks lonely, I think it is because of the chaotic looking city and the figure seems to look overwhelmed being alone within this chaos. Also, the colours here are not as bright as in Afremov’s work.
Casoni Ibolya – “The Rainbow City after Rain Alone”
I like the softness of the work here, Even though the colours are not as vibrant as the other two artists I have looked at, the artist has still used brighter colouring to portray inner city loneliness. Again, here I feel that the figure does look lonely. I think this is to do with the fact that the world around them is colourful and they are painted in blacks and greys. The work makes me feel as if the figure feels alone and as if they don’t belong in this environment.
After exploring how existing artists have portrayed loneliness in cities through the use of brighter colours, I am going to investigate it myself, I will produce some coloured works and experiment with the idea of there being lots of people around you but no interaction, just as I have in my darker works. I will then analyse the success of this and decided whether it is more affective to paint Urban Loneliness in bright or darker colours and continue to work with whatever the verdict is.
Artist Inspiration – Nesta
Posted: February 22, 2014 Filed under: Contextualisation, Field | Tags: alone, alone in the city, Art, Art Student, artist, artist inspiration, city, City Art, digital art, digital collage, hidden loneliness, inspired by artist, isolation, loneliness, loneliness in art, loneliness in the city, lonely, nesta, photo manipulation, urban loneliness, white, white silhouette Leave a commentThe work of Nesta is highly relevant to my project. She portrays the loneliness of living in a city within her work and as I have done in my work portrays the figure as a white silhouette. However, she focuses on the fact that she may as well be invisible in the city and how she feels alone and I have looked at this subject from a different perspective.
“Alone in the City is a digital collage series based on my experiences living alone in London, I hoped to capture the day-to-day happenings of living in a big city by yourself.” -NESTA
I am focusing on everyone else around you in the city and the fact that they may as well not exist because of the loneliness and the zero conversation that occurs. I had already thought about making the figures silhouettes and white in colour to create a ghostly image, but her work confirms to me that it makes for a successful outcome.
Combining Drawing with my Photography: Sketchbook Work
Posted: February 21, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: alone in the city, Art, Art Student, artist, Arts, city, city outlines, Collage, documentation, draw, Drawing, drawing combined with photography, field, Fine Art, hidden loneliness, Ink, lonely, lonely art, Pencil, Photography, sketch, sketchbook, sketchbook work, skyline, urban loneliness Leave a commentHere I have attempted to illustrate being alone in the city, and feeling overwhelmed by its mass structure and buildings through combining the drawing of simple city outlines and my photography of people in the city.
I have experimented with a few different medias when creating these kind of collages including pencil, fine liner, black indian ink, nut-brown ink and ball point pen.
I think the outcomes show the figure to be isolated and I like the contrast in detail and complexity between the drawing and the photography. I am enjoying exploring displaying urban loneliness artistically and even though these are simple images, they do portray being alone in the city.
Mixed Media Painting Experiments
Posted: February 12, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: Acrylic Paint, alone, alone in the city, alone in the city art, Art, Art Student, artist, Artwork, black indian ink, brown ink, canvas, canvas art, charcoal, city, documentation, dull, field, Fine Art, hidden loneliness, loneliness, Mixed media, painting, sepia, silhouette, urban loneliness, white paint Leave a commentHere are some paintings that I produced in relation with Hidden Loneliness in the city. As I’ve mentioned I was heavily influenced by the colour palette and technique in the work of an artist I saw in the urban spree gallery and the work of the user shoe18 on deviantart online (previous blog post), I made some quick sketchbook drawings and I have decided to take it further and experiment with their inspiration in my paintings. These are mixed media pieces. I have used Black and Brown drawing inks, charcoal and Acrylic paint applied with a palette knife to produce these pieces.
I am really happy with these pieces. I think they portray my concept incredibly accurately. As I proposed earlier I have painted one person in colour and everyone else as white silhouettes with slight detail. I have deliberately painted the colour figure with no features to show that you are lonely in the city and when wandering it, you may as well not have an identity. People don’t notice anything distinguishing about you at all. The dripping ink is very effective. I am really pleased with the outcomes and I think the paint being applied with a palette knife and the bleeding of the inks is really effective. I am really taking a risk working with figures as I find it extremely challenging. If I was to do this style of work on a larger scale which I am tempted to do, I will spend more time working on the figures.
Inspiration: FILM: Schindler’s List (1993)
Posted: February 9, 2014 Filed under: Contextualisation, Field | Tags: 1993, alone in the city, Art, film, film as art inspiration, Fine Art, loneliness in the city, Movie, One person in colour, painting, painting inspiration, Schindlers List, Steven Spielberg Leave a commentMy tutor saw my photo edits of one person in colour surrounded by monochrome figures in my Pecha Kucha Presentation and suggested that I watched the Steven Spielberg movie Schindler’s List (1993), This weekend I decided I would, it is a fabulous film and I would definitely recommend it, but what particularly inspired me within it was the scenes with the little girl in the red coat. The coat she wears is the only thing in colour in the scene, and the girl is surrounded by black and white figures.
The little girl looks very lonely in the world and is just wandering around in the chaos. This has inspired me to work with painting crowds of people in the city but with only one person in colour, to show that they are singled out and are not part of the lives of all the other people. The other people might as well not be there as there is no interaction and you feel lonely because you are overlooked by all of them. The city can be a very lonely place and Schindler’s list has encouraged me to consider colour a great deal more when painting this.
INSPIRATION: Artists that influence my ideas to create artwork highlighting the loneliness of city life
Posted: February 5, 2014 Filed under: Contextualisation, Field | Tags: alone in the city, Art, artist, city, city loneliness, digital art, Drawing, dripping ink, Fine Art, influence, Ink, inspirational art, loneliness, loneliness art, Mixed media, monochrome, overwhelming, painting, sepia tones, visual art Leave a commentThis artists work grabbed me as soon as I saw it. I love the scratchy line work and limited dull colour palette. I am highly influenced by how the use of dark line and monochrome and sepia tones are heightening the loneliness of the single figure in the foreground of the piece. The figure looks overwhelmed by the city and alone, emotions I would like to capture within my work.
The piece below “Alone in the City” is a combination of hands on drawing and digital editing. Unfortunately I am unsure of the name of the talent that produced this piece, but they show their work under the username shoe18.
http://shoe18.deviantart.com/art/Alone-in-the-City-170647391
This colour palette and the idea of mixing media’s is something I am keen to start working with. The varied tone within each colour gives the piece a lot of mood and draws me to think about the use of black and brown drawing inks to capture similar effects. Maybe I could use the ink as a ground and then paint and draw into it. This style really jumps out at me and reminds me of a piece I saw in Berlin in the Urban Spree Gallery shown below.
Again in this piece, even though there is a hint of blue coming through, the colour palette is based around blacks browns and white. I am definitely going to be heavily inspired by the works of both these artists and experiment with showing how you can be lonely even when you are around many people whilst employing inspirations from their style and limited colours. Unfortunately, again I’m not sure of the name of this artist’s work, it was tucked away on the floor in the gallery in Berlin but instantly grabbed me as a useful influence to my art work. The uncontrolled drips within this work are something that I would like to experiment with too. Already cannot wait to get stuck in.
Mark Twain – Quote
Posted: January 31, 2014 Filed under: Contextualisation, Field | Tags: alone in the city, Art, city, Fine Art, loneliness, mark twain Leave a comment“a splendid desert – a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race”
– Mark Twain, commenting on new york
This is a highly relevant quote that talks about the idea’s I have explored about being alone among so many other people.
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